Category: Business and Economy
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Negotiating with Public Sector Unions in Virginia
by James C. Sherlock Some Virginia local governments will be negotiating this year for the first time with public sector unions. There is a lot of experience and recommendations documented in other states upon which those governments can draw. Recommendation #1 is that cities, counties and towns hire: law firms with proven experience representing municipal…
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What Virginia Can Do to Temper Inflation
by James A. Bacon Governor Glenn Youngkin has proposed using $437 million in unanticipated transportation revenues, much of it generated by the wholesale tax on gasoline, to give Virginians a three-month break on the 26-cent retail gasoline tax. During his campaign, Youngkin ran on a platform of addressing Virginia’s high cost of living and reversing…
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Richmond, Its Unions and Taxes
by James C. Sherlock Richmond residents should note that: The number of employees at City of Richmond in year 2020 was 4,140. Average annual salary was $56,410 and median salary was $50,001. City of Richmond average salary is 20 percent higher than USA average and median salary is 15 percent higher than USA median. Median…
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Another Reliable Energy Provider Abandons VA
By Steve Haner First published this morning by the Thomas Jefferson Institute for Public Policy. A long-embattled plan to build a natural gas-fueled generating plant not owned by Dominion Energy has become the latest victim of Virginia’s patent hostility toward fossil fuels. Environmental opponents and the incumbent utility will probably join in popping the corks.…
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Richmond Parents and Taxpayers, Welcome to Chicago Public Schools
by James C. Sherlock The gulf between what the City of Richmond School Board (RSB) and the Richmond City Council (RCC) on what will be negotiated with their public unions is actually an ocean. The RSB has authorized the negotiation of virtually everything about how the schools are run. It leaves nothing off the table…
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Know the Terms of Surrender in Negotiating With Teachers Unions
by James C. Sherlock Franklin Roosevelt thought collective bargaining agreements incompatible with public sector work. Today’s left, unburdened by the public interest, finds FDR’s principles at best quaint. Since May of last year collective bargaining is legal in Virginia for local government employees by local option, but for not state employees. The issues most people think…
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Virginia Remains a Green New Deal Mecca
by Steve Haner The elections of a Republican Virginia governor and a new Republican majority in the House of Delegates have not changed Virginia’s status as one of the greenest of Green New Deal states in the country. Every effort to reverse the course set during the previous period of Democratic hegemony has failed at…
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Virginia Policy in the Face of Inflation and Recession
by James C. Sherlock I now expect both higher inflation and a recession, perhaps a deep one. The West is at war, whether or not we are prepared for the effects on our federal and state governments. The bad guys have a lot of natural resources that help keep our economy running. They will cost…
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We Need to Help That Poor Billionaire Out
by Dick Hall-Sizemore With all the huffing and puffing about CRT, face masks, and “wokeism” at UVa, Bacon’s Rebellion has ignored what could be the biggest scam in the General Assembly: the subsidization of an ultrarich guy and his plan to build a football stadium and surrounding “mini-city” in Northern Virginia. The General Assembly is…
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National Security, West Virginia Natural Gas and Hampton Roads – A Proposed Federal Law
by James C. Sherlock This is the fourth in a series of columns recommending bringing West Virginia natural gas to Virginia and from there to our allies. The only way to do get that done with any assurance and speed under the energy emergency in which we find ourselves and the world is for…
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Virginia’s Greens Need an Epiphany
by James C. Sherlock Headlines from the war in Ukraine have raised exponentially the interest in natural gas and the extreme price volatility caused by supply constraints. It is perhaps useful to understand the uses of natural gas, the prices Virginians pay relative to West Virginians, the decline of production in Virginia, and the costs…
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Fairfax County Also Prepared to Move Against Gas
by Steve Haner It was a Richmond City Council resolution back in the fall, expressing a desire to shut down its municipal natural gas utility, that triggered pending (and now struggling) Virginia legislation to prevent localities from prohibiting natural gas. Less attention has been given to the “climate action” plan by Virginia’s largest local government…
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Taking One More Brick from the Green Wall
by James C. Sherlock The green wall preventing businesses from operating at some level of certainty when and if their development proposals will be approved is missing a brick today. The days of a Virginia State Air Pollution Control Board and State Water Control Board overruling the findings of the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality…
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A Time for Conservatives to Speak Out
by James C. Sherlock Sometimes in life we come to a major fork in deciding who we are and who we are going to be going forward. Donald Trump was quoted in the New York Times as having on Tuesday “praised Mr. Putin’s aggression as “genius” and called the Russian leader “very savvy” for describing…
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Reliable Electricity Not Part of the Plan
by David Wojick I recently published a report on how Virginia’s big electric power utility, Dominion Energy Virginia, deliberately ignores the fact that the state’s zero emission law does not work. Utilities are doing this around the country. They will make a fortune building useless wind and solar generation before they finally admit it does…